


Butterscotch

by smileybagel



Series: Candies and Sweaters [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Candy, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Healing, Mentions of Character Death, Nervous Habits, Platonic Life Partners, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smileybagel/pseuds/smileybagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Raleigh has a thing for hard candies, those confections that clack against your teeth when you suck on them and get stuck to the enamel when you bite down.</p><p>Half the Shatterdome and then some know this, but only the ones really close to Raleigh know why, like the person who shares his head space, aka Mako "I'll Kick Your Ass Ten Ways From Sunday" Mori. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterscotch

**Author's Note:**

> w wh oa breaking into the PacRim fic world n ow h ah a -sweats nervously-

Raleigh has a thing for hard candies, those confections that clack against your teeth when you suck on them and get stuck to the enamel when you bite down.

  
Half the Shatterdome and then some know this, but only the ones really close to Raleigh know why, like the person who shares his head space, aka Mako "I'll Kick Your Ass Ten Ways From Sunday" Mori. The others are the team that work on Gipsy and Raleigh kinda jolts and furiously wipes at his eyes when he first sees them after stepping into the 'Dome (he's not crying, he's swears, some dirt just got in his eye) cause' yeah, the engineers crawling on Gip's frame and the techs at her feet, hell even the men and women brandishing paint brushes dripping with bright blue, they're all familiar faces from five years ago. Raleigh has to wonder how long it took to get the old crew together, but by the way they all clap him on the back and add to the collection of candies in his pockets like they had been waiting for ages to gift them, he knew when Pentecost asked them to jump, they asked _how high_. Mako smiles beside him and everything's all right for the time being.

  
Mako knows about the candies and reason behind them when they drift a third time, another trial run that's more for fun than it is for testing reasons. They're sitting in one of the old trainee labs, where the PPDC used to strap in cadets for drift testing and simulations. Newt's standing over them, fingering some of the tech and the pons before clapping his hands together excitedly. Pentecost is standing in the backround next to Herc, both stone-faced bastards like always.

  
"Let's get this show on the road!" Newt practically yells, the colorful ink on his arms nothing more than blurs as he skips around the room turning on the appropriate equipment. His voice carries over from a corner but Raleigh doesn't know which one; his eyes are already closed and he swears he can feel the tug of Mako's mind on his even before Newt begins in the countdown.

  
"Commencing neural handshake in the three, two, one..."

  
They drift just fine now, with Mako in perfect control of her memories and personal R.A.B.I.T. and Raleigh keeping his brother's screaming and final interrupted shout from his mind. Yet, this is for fun, so Raleigh calls up some memories from his childhood, more for Mako's sake than his own because shit, that girl probably never had a proper childhood after the kaiju took down her city and family. They gain forms in the drift, like they did during their first catastrophic attempt, but they're in control now, so they imagine themselves in comfortable clothes and without shoes. The drift kinda feels like waves gently lapping at their feet as they walk.

  
The first one he calls up and allows to take hold is of Yancy opening up presents on Christmas. His brother is ten and seven year old Raleigh is sitting by his feet, holding a brightly covered box in his hands and waiting for Yancy to stop showing off his new Nintendo game so that he can open the present that Raleigh personally picked out in the store. Yancy, knowing his brother was getting impatient and unable to deny him anything, _ever_ , takes the present from Raleigh and tears off the poorly applied wrapping paper with ease. There's a white, collapsable box beneath all the paper, like the ones department stores would sell just for gift wrapping, so Yancy tears off the top and goes through the tissue paper on the inside. His prize is a dark grey sweater.

  
In the cloudy haze that is surprisingly clear and calming, Raleigh can hear Mako chuckle as they watch Yancy pull the item over his head as fast as humanly possible, hugging Raleigh tightly in the next second and praising him for being such a great brother. Mako can feel the love flow from the memory, just how family should feel, and intertwines her fingers with Raleigh's in their weird, dream-like state of being. More memories flash by, focusing on key points like Yancy's obsession for sweaters after that Christmas and passing the habit onto Raleigh.

  
"The one you wore when you came here," Mako's voice sounds perfectly clear over the drift. "It was Yancy's, wasn't it?"

  
Raleigh doesn't answer with words, but the brief glimpse of memory does the job just fine. It was Raleigh, sitting on the bottom bunk of his bed back at the Alaska 'Dome. His things are packed up and the red X's on the calendar on the wall show that it's three weeks after Knifehead, three weeks after losing Yancy, and yeah, Raleigh is holding the sweater in his hands. The tag reads Yancy in faded black ink and Mako feels her heart ache, a pain that is not her own but becomes apart of her anway. Yancy feels like her brother now, too, and she feels the sorrow equally.

  
"Come on." Raleigh takes her hand and walks away, a stiffness to his shoulders that wasn't there before. Mako wants to kiss the dip between his shoulder blades and Raleigh knows that, so he chuckles and rolls his arms, shaking the tension away. "I have a turtle neck of his that doesn't have as many holes. Fits better too."

  
They walk for a ways (how long have they been drifting? shouldn't newt pull them out?) until something sweet smelling hits Mako's nose. She stops and Raleigh doesn't, not until he notices the missing sound of her footsteps, so loud in the drift. There's a memory floating around them, with children laughing and screaming, with Jack-O-Lanterns with crooked grins. Raleigh smiles at the memory and lets it take hold, feeling the chill of the October night fall on their skin.

  
"First Halloween after our dad left. We didn't go to many houses that year, since we both had to be up early the next day for school, but Yance bought candy for me the day after to make up for it."

  
"Hmm."

  
"You ever celebrate Halloween?" Raleigh gives Mako a glance and a smile, nudging her a bit with his elbow. Memories from her side fly by after that, like she was wracking her mind for even a tidbit of informaton concerning the holiday. Raleigh shrugs and laughs before she can say anything.

  
"We'll do it this year, get everyone to participate, even that ol' bump on a log you call dad."

  
Mako nods with that small smile of hers, that one that contains so much hope, and Raleigh pulls one last memory. It's a simple one. The standard issue room of PPDC pilots stares back them with Yancy laying on the top bunk of the bed he shared with Raleigh. He's tapping his fingers against his thighs and biting his lip as Raleigh strides into the room, holding a bag that crinkles with sound at every move. He throws it up to Yancy, who catches it like it was a practiced motion without even looking in Raleigh's direction. It's not practiced, it's just how they are now, perfectly in sync and better off for it. Mako wants to leave the memory because she can feel Raleigh getting uncomfortable, but when she turns to face him, he just nods back towards the past, his eyes on Yancy. So she watches.

  
 _"What's this?"_ Yancy's voice is garbled and near silent, completelty different than any other sound Mako has heard in the drift. Raleigh's, the memory, is just the same, she discovers.

  
 _"Just open it, will you? It took forever to get the techs up at LOCCENT to hand em' over. Took a lot of bribery too. Fuckin' Tendo."_ The last part was more of a whisper, for Raleigh's ears, but Yancy heard it all the same. He opens the bag with a smirk and beams when he sees the bag's contents. Not even ten seconds later, he's standing next to his brother with his hands thrown around Raleigh's neck, planting slopping kisses on his brother's cheeks.

  
 _"You got me butterscotch! Honest to goodness butterscotch! Aw man, you're the best, kiddo! Jesus fuckin' Christ, who'd ya have to kill to get this?"_

  
Raleigh shoves his brother away with a laugh, wiping at his face as if Yancy's lips have cooties. _"No one, as long as Tendo keeps his end of the bargain."_

  
The memory ends abruptly as the drift starts to fade, Newt's voice cutting through the haze and alerting them of their time. Mako feels panic over the connection that fades as quickly as it appeared and looks to Raleigh who only smiles with a clenched jaw. There's another feeling that slides over to her, prompted by Raleigh. It holds Yancy's affection for the sweet treats and how he subconsciously influenced Raleigh over their own drift. The younger brother took a liking to butterscotch too, but he didn't start carrying them around until after Yancy died. The candies became a part of a nervous tick and coping mechanism, with Raleigh secreting away the sweets in the his pockets. He still has them on his person, still for the same reason Mako realizes, but the variety of candy expanded over the years because he hasn't been able to get his hands on _any damn butterscotch._

  
They open their eyes to the trainee room, still in sync from the residual influence of the drift as they blink up the scientist and move to stand once the pons are off their heads. They share a look that goes unnoticed by the others in the room, even as Newt checks them over to make sure they didn't have any adverse side effects.

  
When they get the all clear from Newt and are dismissed from Stacker, they walk together to their rooms, every motion synchronized down to their breathing. When Raleigh punches in the key code for his room, his hands already snaking under his sweater to pull it off, he turns just before Mako enters her own room with a question of his lips.

  
"Wanna go a few rounds in the Kwoon before lunchtime?" Respectfully, Mako bows her head with an apology tumbling from her mouth. The hand on her door handle tightens for a moment and her smile when she looks at Raleigh is strained.

  
"I'm sorry, Raleigh, but I have some business to take care of before I do anything else." Her smile gets softer and she doesn't look as tense. "It is of utmost importance."

  
Raleigh doesn't let the rejection bother him and shrugs, smiling back her. Still, he pulls his sweater over his head and throws it somewhere in his room, grabbing a grey wife-beater, a towel, and a pair of sweatpants that were hanging on a hook by the door. He pulls the shirt on and closes his door, walking over to Mako to give her a pat on the shoulder before he walks down the steps.

  
"No problem, some other time. See you at lunch though, right?" Mako's nod is all he needs and then he's down the hall, his long legs covering much of the distance from their rooms to the corner in no time. Raleigh gives Mako a little wave and a smile before he disappears around the steel walls.

  
Mako frowns, drawing her bottom lip into her mouth where it's worried by her teeth. She makes a concerned noise and turns into her room, pulling off her own standard issue PPDC sweater revealing a black tank underneath. Before she's out the door, she pins back her hair on the left side with a bobbie pin and pulls on a cream colored caridigan. Mako walks through the halls, passing by techs and lab assisstants and a few guards in heavy armor, until she reaches one of the smaller doors leading to the main hangar.

Once inside the hangar, she pushes down the urge to inspect the damaged jeagers, Crismon Typhoon and Cherno Alpha, even though she desparately wants to view the repairs.  
Crismon and Cherno had been damaged badly during the double event with Otachi and Leatherback, but they were salvagable. Cherno needs the most work done, with half of it's helmet melted off by the kaiju's acid and more wires than ever severed by the same substance. There's a risk in spending time repairing it, but they'd rather try and succeed than not try and have only three jeagers go at the breach. Crismon has its own issues, needing a replacement arm and new cables for the nerves and muscle fibers that run throughout its body. Even with the damage, Mako thinks it's better to have them beaten up and still standing than rotting on the ocean floor.

  
Mako makes her way to Cherno's dock, where she's sure she'll find the Kaidanovsky's with their boombox and many rings on their fingers. She does, and they have their boombox playing Russian hip hop. Their rings glint with the light of sparks flying overhead, their fingers tapping knees in time and beat with the music. They have bandages around the arms and torsos, but otherwise look fine. The only thing that gives away the fact that they're not fine is the way they're sitting on the bench, angled towards each other with their heads bent low, foreheads almost touching. Makos coughs politely to get their attention, feeling something like a child when Sasha looks at her with soft eyes and a softer smile. The Russian beauty stands, letting her hand linger in Aleksis' before she wraps Mako up in a hug and kisses her hair.

  
"Thank you, little bird, for coming to our rescue."

  
Mako is hit with the brutal realization that she would have lost a very good friend (seven of them actually) if she and Raleigh had not convinced Stacker to let them go, but before she can properly cling to and cry in Sasha's embrace, the older woman pulls away. Sasha swipes her thumb under Mako's eye, picking up a salty tear and smiling that sweet smile again.

  
Some say that Sasha is the Ice Queen with she sharp angles and sharper eyes, but Mako can only see a caring woman who never had the chance to have a child of her own. It is sadness that makes her eyes so cold.

  
"But I know you did not come here to have our thanks, da?"

  
"No, I did not." Mako smiles at her elder and wants to say that she didn't even consider being thanked for saving someone's life, but keeps quiet about it. "I know that you can get anything, even something as rare as...confections."

  
Aleksis raises an eyebrow at her from behind Sasha at the statement, but he smiles too and it's soft like Sasha's. He stands up next to his wife and puts a hand around her shoulders, pulling the woman to his side.

  
They are parents without their children and thought makes Mako's heart ache something fierce.

  
When Aleksis speaks, his voice is pitched low but still audible even with the music in the backround. "For Becket boy, da? We know of his sweet tooth. It is little problem, do not worry, Miss Mori. You have any specific candy in mind?"

  
Mako grins and says simply: "Butterscotch, please."


End file.
